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Bampton Classical Opera has announced that applications are now open for the
company’s Young Singers’ Competition 2015. This biennial competition was
first launched in 2013 to celebrate Bampton Classical Opera’s 20th
birthday, and is aimed at identifying the finest emerging young opera singers
currently working in the UK.

This is a revised version of my review of the Sept 5th
1991American premiere of The Death of Klinghoffer, at the
Brooklyn Academy of Music. The opera was first performed at Brussels’ La
Monnaie the previous spring.

"Although there are now more people on this planet than there have ever been before, there are fewer dramatic voices. Something is wrong with that equation. I thought there needs to be some sort of helping hand so that dramatic voices don’t fall through the cracks in the system as they advance through their various stages of development."

Anna Prohaska sings Sister Constance in Poulenc’s Dialogues des
Carmélites at the Royal Opera House. In the same month, she’s also in
London to sing a recital with Eric Schneider at the Wigmore Hall, and to sing
Henze with Sir Simon Rattle at the Barbican Hall.

I met with the embattled artistic director of the Opéra et Orchestre National de Montepellier not to talk about his battles. I simply wanted to know the man who had cast and staged a truly extraordinary Mozart/DaPonte trilogy.

Matthew Polenzani reprises the role of the Chevalier des Grieux in Jules Massenet’s Manon at the Royal Opera House. “I love coming back to London”, he says, “It’s a very good house and they take care of you as a singer. And the level of music making is unbelievably high”.

The Flying Dutchman is a transitional piece because Wagner was only beginning to establish his style. He took some aspects from Carl Maria von Weber and others from Italian composers like Vincenzo Bellini.

On a personal level, I feel that Dolores is almost like Emmeline grown up. Their circumstances are not exactly parallel, but they are both women at very different points in their lives whose stories involve dilemmas with life-changing outcomes.

On September 18, 2013, San Francisco Opera will present the world premiere of Tobias Picker’s opera, Dolores Claiborne, which has a libretto by J. D. McClatchy based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name.

Commentary

20 Dec 2004

Michael Tilson Thomas Turns 60

The ageless baton By Allan Ulrich Published: December 20 2004 13:44 | Last updated: December 20 2004 13:44 The conductor Michael Tilson Thomas turns 60 this week and, despite a few streaks of silver in his hair, his is a...

The conductor Michael Tilson Thomas turns 60 this week and, despite a few streaks of silver in his hair, his is a career that does not know the meaning of diminuendo. The erstwhile young firebrand is in hailing distance of becoming a Grand Old Man of American music. He mutters that "60 is the new 40", as he escorts the visitor to the third floor of his San Francisco home. Here, the mementos of a life in the arts - a framed postcard from Igor Stravinsky; a drawing by the California composer Lou Harrison; photographs of Yiddish theatre idols of an earlier generation - compete with the glorious view of San Francisco Bay.

Tilson Thomas has always seemed a contrarian, confronting prevailing myths about the business of music in an uncaring age. The dithyrambs of economic woe emanating from American orchestral circles are not heard in the corridors of the San Francisco Symphony's Davies Hall, where MTT (as he is universally known) is marking his tenth season as music director. He presides over an orchestra budgeted at $50m per annum, one that basks in more enthusiasm from the players and the 32,000 subscribers than when he bowed in the post in 1995.

[Click here for remainder of article (subscription to Financial Times online required)].